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Keeping the Barossa beautiful

While so many of us are highly critical of government at some stage or another, one of the greatest pieces of legislation of all times must surely be our State Government’s decision to introduce the now 10c collection fee on flavoured milk cartons, cool drink cans together with beer and wine bottles.

Why is it that South Australia is the only real state in our great country that properly addresses recycling?

One only has to travel interstate to big cities like Melbourne to see what a waste of resources is evident in the number of rejected drink cans, small beer bottles and flavoured milk cartons littering the footpaths there.

Whilst milk cartons are made of a natural fibre, card, they do break down when mixed with water. However, when left lying on street footpaths and kerb they become quite untidy litter.

Beer and wine bottles together with drink cans are great resources that make sense to recycle. Just think that if everyone were to take their beer bottles to the rubbish dump how soon we would run out of the materials required to make glass bottles. Plus that doesn’t even take into consideration the extra space that would be needed for landfill.

Aluminium drink cans when melted down can be recycled into a range of all manner of things such as walking sticks to small boats.

Plastic bags too are now used far less in our state and plastic is one of the most challenging materials for recycling.

Recycling is one of the best ways to preserve our planet for future generations. Let’s hope the other states soon catch on and follow South Australia’s lead.